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Rhubarb Flummery
Soak a quarter of an ounce of isinglass or gelatine in three table-spoonfuls of cold water for an hour. Cut up one pound and a half of rhubarb into small pieces, and simmer this in as much cold water as will barely cover it, until it is quite soft. Drain off the juice, put it into a saucepan with the soaked isinglass, and stir until the isinglass is dissolved. Rub the fruit through a sieve, mix the pulp with the isinglass, etc., and add four table-spoonfuls of thick cream. Sweeten according to taste. Stir the flummery over the fire for a few minutes, but do not allow it to boil, pour it into a damped basin, and let it stand in a cool place till set. Turn it out on a glass dish, and send it to table with custard poured round it. Time to boil the rhubarb, fifteen to thirty minutes, according to its age. Probable cost, 10d., if made with gelatine.
A straightforward gelatine-set fruit cream, but the two details that decide success are the strength of the gelatine and keeping the mixture below a boil.
- Do not let it boilGelatine loses setting power with prolonged high heat, and the cream will curdle against the acid of the rhubarb. Warm the mixture only until it is smooth and evenly blended, then take it off the heat.
- Isinglass and gelatineIsinglass is prepared from dried fish swim bladders, sturgeon originally though other fish were used commercially; it was once a standard clarifying and setting agent and is now sold chiefly as a brewing product rather than a grocery one. Use gelatine, as the recipe itself allows in its costing.
- A quarter of an ounceThat is about 7 g, one standard envelope of powdered gelatine, or roughly three to four sheets of leaf gelatine. That is enough to set something in the region of a pint of liquid and pulp, though it is close to the minimum for a shape firm enough to unmould.
- SoakingThree tablespoons of cold water for an hour is a bloom, not a hydration shortcut. Powdered gelatine needs only five to ten minutes; leaf gelatine should be soaked in plenty of cold water and squeezed out before use.
- Trim the leavesRhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid and should be discarded entirely. Use stalks only, cut into short lengths; young spring stalks cook in fifteen minutes, coarse late stalks nearer thirty, as the recipe notes.
- SweeteningNo quantity is given; the recipe leaves it to taste. Start with 4 oz (110 g) sugar for 1½ lb of stalks and taste while the mixture is still warm, since a cold set tastes less sweet.
- Thick creamFour tablespoons of thick cream means double or heavy cream, at least 36 per cent fat. Single or half-and-half will thin the set and is more likely to split against the fruit acid.
- The damped basinRinsing the mould with cold water and leaving it wet lets the set flummery release cleanly. A pudding basin, a charlotte tin or a plain bowl all work; dip briefly in hot water and invert onto the serving dish.
- Setting and yieldAllow at least four hours in the refrigerator, or overnight for a shape that turns out confidently. Serves four to six with a thin pouring custard around the base.
Flummery began as something quite different: the Welsh llymru, a sour jelly made by steeping oatmeal in water until it fermented slightly, then boiling the strained liquor until it thickened and would set. By the eighteenth century English cooks had borrowed the name for a much richer sweet, setting cream and almonds with hartshorn or isinglass and turning it out of decorative moulds, and by the time Cassell's dictionary appeared in the 1870s a flummery generally meant a moulded fruit-and-cream jelly with no oatmeal in it at all. Rhubarb was the obvious spring candidate: cheap, prolific in kitchen gardens after its rise as a culinary plant in the early nineteenth century, and sharp enough to want both sugar and cream. The costing of 10d. and the alternative of gelatine for isinglass show a book written for households watching the housekeeping book, at a point when commercially packaged gelatine was displacing the older and dearer fish product.